


Petals

by usssamwell



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann, but like it had to be done, im sorry y’all I really am, no happy ending, past pimms, tw blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 02:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14823225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usssamwell/pseuds/usssamwell
Summary: Hanahaki Disease AU-If you were to ask Jack back then what the Q was like then he would have given you a good old sound bite about camaraderie and how they were just playing the game they loved. If you were to ask him now it was a blur of lights and chasing the noises inside with the bottom of a bottle. It was pills and secrets and jealousy. It was failure and beeping monitors that seemed to echo his father’s disappointment. It was a mess of mistakes and flower petals. So many flower petals.





	Petals

**Author's Note:**

> Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from one-sided love where the patient throws up flower petals when suffering. It can be removed through surgery but the feelings disappear along with it.

If you were to ask Jack back then what the Q was like then he would have given you a good old sound bite about camaraderie and how they were just playing the game they loved. If you were to ask him now it was a blur of lights and chasing the noises inside with the bottom of a bottle. It was pills and secrets and jealousy. It was failure and beeping monitors that seemed to echo his father’s disappointment. It was a mess of mistakes and flower petals. So many flower petals.

He never meant to drag Kent down with him. Honestly. Back then he didn’t really care for anyone and nothing mattered unless it stopped the shaking. What he had with Kent had been destructive, a way of hiding from everything else in his life, but for those small few hours it was like he was someone else. It wasn’t the healthiest but then nothing he did back then was. Jack had thought that their arrangement had come with an understanding. That what they had together was just letting off steam. That they were a no strings kind of thing because after the Q, after the draft, it would mean nothing. It could never go any further. Not with the pressure of the league and the disappointment it would bring. He wasn’t in a position to let anybody in to his mess. He thought Kent got that but then there was a random flower petal on the bathroom floor staring back at him and everything went to shit a hell of a lot faster than before. Jack didn’t say anything. Just swallowed down the implications and walked out of the bathroom, throwing a towel at the idiot smirking on the bed.

It was harder after that day. He’d find petals in the waste bin, blood in the skin, flashes of pain and gasps of breath where there never used to be gasps before. He wasn’t the only one struggling to breathe each day now and it was getting too obvious to ignore it but lord, did he try. Though the smell of flowers followed him everywhere he went. It was a sickly reminder that he was a destroyer, that he ruined everything he touched. Soon he couldn’t even touch Kent without the smell making him gag.

And then Kent disappeared.

When he came back the smell of flowers disappeared. Jack didn’t need to ask why. He also pretended to be asleep when the knock came in the middle of the night. Practice got harder. Games became a fight. His father’s voice was laced with disgust on the other end of the phone. Soon the pills didn’t stop the shaking any more. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the splattered blood in the basin, the petals around his feet: they were everywhere he went and nothing he could do would make them go away. Kent had made his disappear but Jack’s lingered as if spring had just begun and there were still months of blossoms to endure.

And then Jack disappeared. Though he didn’t return. Shut himself away in a room where he wasn’t even allowed to read without being watched. He’d still see the petals out of the corner of his eyes but the news brought the bouquets to his feet. Each story was a new bunch attacking his senses. No one else could see his petals. The ones that followed him from those tangled sheets and stolen kisses in the back of cars. But Jack knew they were there. Even long after they disappeared from sight he knew. He couldn’t run from them like Kent could. Couldn’t just make everything disappear just like Kent had. Jack wished he could. Wished that he could return with a new scar on his chest and an emptiness inside but there is no operation for what kind of sick he is. No cure for the festering inside his lungs. There are roots inside him but they don’t just end at his lungs. There spread across his entire body, dragging him into the earth so that each step is an agonising struggle. His symptoms don’t smell pretty, can’t be swept away by the wind, and he cannot forgive Kent for that.

Looking back on his time in the Q there was a lot wrong. It wasn’t as simple as roots and pills and there was blame on both sides but it still happened. Jack still overdosed and made Kent smell of flowers. Kent still managed the cut out the infection known as Jack out of his system as if he were nothing. Jack had to carry on with his for the rest of his life. So yeah, if you asked him he’d nod his head and tell you the things he’s been repeating since he was twelve years old. He wouldn’t tell you that the smell of flowers still makes his sick and that when he looks at Kent he still sees the petals in his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Tony. Max. You are to blame for this.


End file.
